


set aside this dream

by ElasticElla



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Angst, Ballet, Brief suicidal thoughts, F/F, Femslash February, Non-Linear Narrative, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/pseuds/ElasticElla
Summary: Fringilla spins faster and faster, a tight pirouette. She’s all lean muscle and smooth lines, beauty and grace.
Relationships: Triss Merigold/Fringilla Vigo
Kudos: 10
Collections: femslashficlets: tarot prompt challenge





	set aside this dream

**Author's Note:**

> eyyy it's ya girl back at it again with witcher femslash \o/

Fringilla spins faster and faster, a tight pirouette. She’s all lean muscle and smooth lines, beauty and grace. Fringilla would probably slap her for daring to think of her so familiar, with such regard. 

Triss often watches her once-classmates, says it’s for choreography planning. It’s even true. When it isn’t Fringilla anyways. Watching Fringilla alone is an experience, one that makes her feel like the dirtiest sort of voyeur, but she’s far too addicted to stop. It isn’t the ambition, for while Fringilla’s may be fiercest, it’s far from unique at Tissaia’s Dance Academy. It isn’t her beauty either, for there’s no shortage of that, even if her features are the favorite. One day she’ll figure it out. Why her mind goes blissfully blank watching Fringilla leap across the stage. (Why it doesn’t watching Sabrina or Yennefer, her notebook filling with plans.) 

One day. Not today, not when Fringilla’s finished warming up and is about to practice her role for Giselle. (She plays Albrecht: she captures the flight of fancy, the immediate love, the despair, the desperation in the last dance until dawn. And Triss is wholly consumed by her movements.) 

.

Triss’s mother won’t stop calling, won’t stop reminding her that there’s a spare room back at home. That she can still give up, give in. It only makes Triss want to dig her heels in, she doesn’t have to be a dancer, but her future still revolves around dance. 

She’s skipped the successful career bit, jumped straight to the washed up wannabe professor and/or choreographer. She just needs to create something great, something awe-inspiring enough to gain a sponsor. 

No pressure. 

.

Triss lays in the garden sometimes, meditative. Only there isn’t any mental vigor, she’s just becoming one with the earth. 

Everything’s easier, so close to the ground.  
.

Triss doesn’t break her ankle dancing. Nor climbing trees nor buildings, which had her freshman year roommate Renfri convinced she’d hurt herself. It happens the winter of her sophomore year, mere weeks after she landed the role of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. A patch of black ice, an emergency room visit, and Triss would never dance again. 

Not like before. Not like a real dancer. 

.

When Triss is accepted to Tissaia’s Dance Academy it is the proudest moment of her life so far. There was always a shred of doubt in the back of her mind, second guessing every application. That she should be applying to regular colleges too, that her performances might not get her in anywhere at all. 

But then the letter came, like an absolute dream. The best academy in the continent, and they wanted _her_. (None of the other acceptances mattered, she got into one of the elite dancing schools.)

.

Triss finds out on a Sunday from her physical therapist that she’ll never dance again. Or more specifically- that no amount of rehab will get her left ankle’s flexibility back. 

Triss finds out on a Sunday that drinking tons of beer and eating pizza isn’t nearly as good as it looks in the movies. She hasn’t had a slice of pizza since she was nine at a birthday party, a small disappointing act of rebellion back then. She’s sipped beer before, never really cared for the underlying bitterness. It felt right to get today though, and now Triss is stuck finishing the six-pack, because she sure as hell isn’t drinking the rest sober when she can taste the swill. 

Triss finds out on a Sunday that her building’s roof is really, really high up. Her fellow students are tiny moving pinpricks, each going somewhere grand. 

She isn’t. 

She doesn’t want to jump. It’s an almost surprising revelation, for the ambition is dried up in her chest, her useless ankle dangling off the edge. She wants to live, even if her dreams have turned to dust. 

(What else is worth dreaming about?)

.

Tissaia herself pushes her towards choreography, says her mind is too bright to waste. It feels like a cursed blessing, and Triss picks up a pencil, can follow its direction. 

It isn’t surprising that she’s good at it; it’s surprising that she enjoys it. 

There’s still the bitter sting of jealousy in her chest as she watches her classmates dance, but it can be pushed aside by the spark of creation. It’s entirely smothered when she watches Fringilla. Nothing could ever tear her attention from the dancer. 

For Fringilla holds her heart in a tight grip, a single squeeze and she could stop it from ever beating again. (Triss has never been in love before, is captured by the rapturous feeling.)


End file.
